Friday, May 11, 2012

Lowlights & Highlights: May 12, 2012

Amendment One. Need I say more? At first I wasn't going to, but here we go...

I really don't want to dwell on this too much, so I'll say that on the good side, a lot of young people turned out to vote against this. Last week I mention a couple of stories showing how the upcoming generations are far more LGBT inclusive. That fact bodes well for the overall fight for LGBT equality. Then there is the obvious fact that enshrining discrimination into a Constitution is a reprehensible thing to do, but so chose a majority of North Carolina voters. I'll just end this part by reiterating the words of on of the amendment's supporters who said that should the measure pass, it will likely be repealed within 20 years. Hopefully, it won't take nearly that long.

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The day after the fall of North Carolina to constitutionalized bigotry, President Barack Obama formally announced (finally) that he supports that right of same-sex couples to marry under the law. He has been "evolving on this issue for about 18 months now according to my reading, so it's high passed time that he come to this conclusion. There are some who will say that he should have done this before the vote in North Carolina...and I would agree with that statement. However, given how the vote ended up, President Obama would not and could not have single-handedly pushed that amendment to defeat.

To be honest, were I a betting man, I would have had him announcing support for marriage equality at the nominating convention this Summer. However, based on pressure from within the administration and the campaign, combined with pressure from without in terms of progressive organizations and LGBT groups, it looks seems like the announcement had been forestalled as long as possible.

I think that with this cloud of doubt lifted from the campaign, many gay people who had admonished the President for his hesitance on this issue will be far more willing to work on his campaign's behalf and give money to his organization. It is good to know that the President is on our side. now, the only question is exactly how hard will he fight for marriage equality?